Three Reasons Author Tags are Essential

It is getting harder and harder to stand out in search results. Sure you can write regular blog posts with solid answers but what if no one clicks through to view them? The more people find your content and link to you and share what you post the more search engines trust you. Author tagging is another signal that helps build trust and make your site show well in Google search results. Here are three reasons to take advantage of this easy to implement tool.

What is the Author Tag?

The author tag is a small bit of code that establishes a link from your blog author profile to your Google profile. The following Google post on the author tag has been updated to include very easy to implement instructions. Once you are done getting the tag established, don’t forget to check and see if it worked through the Google rich snippets tool. If you have WordPress and the link from each post is from your profile, you may have trouble getting this to work. The easiest fix is to install the rel=author plugin. The plugin allows the necessary code to be inserted within the profile otherwise WordPress takes out the code when you save it.

Your Image Shows in Search Results

Author Tag Examples

By far the most enticing reason for including an author tag is that your image will show alongside search results in Google. This makes your result stand out from the rest. Try searching for “Google Plus” and you will see there are a couple of results that have images. Having an image next to a result makes it easier to stand out from the crowd of choices and increase the click through rate. Contrast that search result with “Google Author Tag” where there are a number of results with images. If you implement the author tag now you will have some time before the result becomes more common.

Increase Author Authority

Connecting to your Google profile increases your authority as an author. Anyone can write a blog post and make declarations. It is easier to trust those declarations when you can verify who the author is and that is exactly what the author tag does. When your writing is consistently focused on a particular topic then you can steadily gain recognition for that through your connecting your blog profile with your Google profile.

Making Guest Posting Even Stronger

This can also work for when you write a guest blog post for another site. If you write a guest post for another site and link to your profile then it is easier for Google to recognize. This makes guest posting on another site even stronger because you are recognized as the established author.

What this means for the little guy is that you can easily stand out from the rest in search results. Until more people catch on and start doing the same anyway. If you enjoyed this post please share it via Twitter, Facebook or any other social network. Thanks!